Social Media Strategies

I am sure you have heard about how marketers often play with certain emotional triggers to entice people to act quickly. You can use the same principles of scarcity when selling tickets and merchandising to your audiences. Creating scarcity implies restricting the supply of the things that you are selling to create a perception of shortage. This becomes even more effective if it is bundled up with a promotional offer, such as a discount or bonuses.

Some people are indecisive or slow about making their decisions and often end up being too late. Scarcity puts them in a spot where they become more inclined to jumping for it rather than “thinking about it later”.

If they are on your lists, they already are interested in your services. Give them a great offer for a limited time and they might say “heck, why not?”

I have even used scarcity for high demand markets by increasing the prices up by 25%. This happened in an “open theater concert” that we were planning a few years back on the East Coast. It was going to be the first concert of that summer and people were already looking forward to it. Regardless of the prices, we would have sold a total number of 980 tickets for 980 seats. We decided to play with the scarcity approach to increase the prices up 25% from our usual rates for a limited time short supply. This trigger helped us sell all of our tickets in a record time and earn 25% more than we usually do from such events.

It’s human nature that people in general like getting attention and feeling important. Also a part of human psyche is the fact that people fear scarcity. For successful marketing you have to build on these emotional aspects. Another important factor that I should mention here is that if you promise anything through your campaign, then be sure to fulfil that promise. People may let you play with their emotions but nobody likes being taken for a ride.

Once you have the people interested, you can subtly convey that there are not enough tickets to go around. This way they’ll queue up to get the “golden ticket” so to speak. This creates a sense of urgency and makes people take quick decisions. Another powerful aspect of scarcity is that it can help you increase the price. If you have built the hype in such a manner that people believe that the event is not to be missed at any cost then they’ll even pay more to get the tickets. Remember timing is everything, don’t be too early or too late or it will all boil down to nothing. Final word of warning: keep your word. Do not promise people something you can’t pull off.

Simon U Ford (SUF.EDBD)

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